


A Fine Strudle

by blueteak



Category: Vicky Bliss - Elizabeth Peters
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 22:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17031531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/pseuds/blueteak
Summary: Vicky and John have settled in Munich. Things are normal--so normal that Schmidt's forced to rely on Vicky's romance novel for excitement. Until an old nemesis reappears.





	A Fine Strudle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GeorgeEmerson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeorgeEmerson/gifts).



It felt unnatural to leave Rosanna in the heart of the desert with nowhere to turn and no one to trust--perhaps because that specific situation still hit a little too close to home. However, there was an unnatural silence coming from Arthur’s direction and she needed to see what he’d gotten up to. She knew nothing terrible had likely happened. Caesar would have alerted her if there were anything wrong. Even Clara would have deigned to let her know. 

No, Arthur was probably “decorating” some of her boring old medieval prints with pink mustaches and zigzags. John had once remarked that only their son had the talent to turn Saint Michael into Salvador Dali—and at age 4!

It was a relief to enter her sitting room to find Arthur engaged in decorating a blank canvas for a change. Ah. Likely because his father had arrived back at home while she'd been lost in writing and had quietly steered him toward a blank piece of paper rather than her art, his art, or the wall. 

“Looks like a Pollock,” Vicky whispered to John. She did not like the speculative look in his eye that came about as a result of this observation.

She covered Arthur’s ears with her hands, causing him to look up at her while still moving his brush on the canvas, making the Pollock effect more pronounced. 

“Stop imagining our son as a master _forger_ ” she whispered. 

John dared to laugh holding his hands up. “I solemnly swear that the only way I will encourage him artistically will be to show him the Bob Ross videos your mother sent us.”

Vicky very much doubted that. John might very well have Arthur forging a bust of Caesar (not the dog, although an Arthur-made bust of the dog might be a good gift for Schmidt) after their son outgrew his modern art preferences. Piano playing. That was it. She could subtly try to shift Arthur toward the piano. Both she and John agreed that it was an instrument worth learning, after all. 

“Bob Ross is a forger?” Arthur asked. Vicky found herself fervently hoping Arthur didn't yet know what a forger was.

“He’s definitely not a forger,” John replied, twinkle dimming slightly at the unintentional comparison between himself and Bob Ross. 

“Happy little trees!” Vicky said brightly, laughing when the idea of John forging a Bob Ross would not leave her mind. She was glad to be shaken out of her memories, which she had been trying to exorcise via Rosanna. Though given what her mood had been before stumbling on this scene, perhaps not enough time had passed since Egypt and deserts should have been off limits for…longer than they had been. Maybe it was time for Rosanna to time travel and be transported to…Michigan. Or Tennessee. Actually, a lot of “Jolene” would fit in with her heroine’s current tale and Schmidt would be delighted if she combined country music and Rosanna's adventures.

“Happy little trees!” Arthur agreed. 

Maybe the piano lessons could wait. 

John, who had been idly sorting through their mail, most likely in an attempt to distance himself from the Bob Ross conversation, stilled. Someone who didn't know him as well as Vicky wouldn't have noticed that something was very wrong. Arthur, luckily, remained oblivious as Vicky joined John to look at the envelope. The handwriting looked familiar, but she was having difficulty placing it. John, clearly, had had no such difficulty. 

John cocked his head at her, indicating a need to speak in private. She, in turn, cocked her head at Arthur and asked him to continue his painting elsewhere, not wanting to leave him alone where he was given his proximity to some of John’s favorite works. Granted, they were what were referred to as “reproductions” since John insisted they weren’t destined to hang on museum walls in place of the originals. Still, John wouldn’t want any Pollack overlay on his...pieces. 

“Happy little trees,” she repeated again, ushering Arthur toward the art-free television room. 

Once Arthur had gathered his paints and was contentedly ensconced in the television room trying to paint a sky with Bob Ross on the VHS, John finally told her the rough outline of the letter, which he had already crumpled into a ball.

Cruise ship (again), threats against his own person and freedom (again), threats against Vicky as well (again) and threats to Arthur (new). Enemy (old. Again). And apparently not as dead as a result of an avalanche as they thought he had been. Dieter had not gone down in the snow, his aquamarine jacket memorializing his place of burial for all time after all. Somehow, he'd been rescued and his new practical joke was to force Vicky and John to get back on a boat and hunt for the Trojan gold, which he claimed was likely hidden near a port of call of a luxury cruise line (of course). It would not have been difficult for Dieter to learn of what had happened in Egypt. Vicky could just imagine his delight at her discomfort with not only dealing with him again, but having to speak outside of her specialty.

If John was surprised by the alacrity with which Vicky agreed to get back on a boat and lecture on a field that had nothing to do with her specialization, he didn’t let on. This time, she was going to go to Karl Feder and make him put her on a ship. For all she knew, she’d be lecturing on Pollock, and gladly. 

Once the details had been arranged, Vicky and John's lengthiest period of heist-related agreement continued. “We have to take Arthur to Schmidt,” they agreed. Two birds, one stone. There was no way Schmidt would attempt to follow them when he was responsible for “Sir John” and Vicky’s child. His disguises would, this time, be saved for playing dress up with Arthur. Or so they hoped. Neither wanted a repeat of the "investigating" that often prompted full-on disguises rather than costumes, even when it was seemingly low-risk investigating. Arthur had told them about the time “Grandpa Schmidt” had played a game with him where he’d pretended to be a violinist, a gardener, and a telephone repairman all in one day.

When asked, Schmidt had assured Vicky that there had been no danger—he was just checking to see whether Gerda’s beau was good enough for her. Once he’d come clean, he’d decided to go for broke and asked Vicky to flirt with the man to see if he would be faithful to Gerda. Vicky couldn’t decide whether he’d read too many romance novels or too few if he believed investigating Gerda's love life would do anything positive for Gerda's relationship with Vicky--or Gerda’s relationship with her new suitor. 

When they arrived on Schmidt’s doorstep to drop Arthur off, Schmidt's forced cheer for Arthur’s sake began to work on them for the not-so-brief dinner Schmidt insisted on feeding them. He only stopped attempting to get John to eat another helping of knockwurst when Arthur asked his parents whether they would have food where they were going. Now, lack of food was one thing Vicky was *not* concerned about on this cruise, and she happily told Arthur so. 

Schmidt appeared reluctant to let them go once he finally allowed the meal to end, probably aware that this time he really couldn't assist them in person. After dinner, he attempted to engage them in a sing-a-long of “Folsom Prison Blues,” looking dumbfounded when Arthur stared blankly at him. Arthur's unfamiliarity with the song, according to Schmidt, was evidence of Vicky and John's shocking neglect of their son's education. Still, Schmidt couldn't believe Arthur had never even heard of Johnny Cash. Schmidt's face when Arthur scrunched up his nose and asked "Who?" almost had them in gales of laughter despite their reason for being at Schmidt's house. 

“Come, ja ‘I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,’” Schmidt crooned to Arthur. “Ach, you must know this. You’re an American boy!”  


“Hold on, he’s British too!” John interjected, accent thickening pointedly.

“Yes!” Schmidt exclaimed, in real delight. “And not just British—Cornish. Hmmm…you must know of ‘King Arthur and King Cornwall,’ yes?”

To Vicky and John’s surprise, Arthur nodded. “Granny Tregarth told me that story,” he explained. 

Ah, Granny Tregarth. The woman Vicky, in a haze of pain medication post-childbirth, had allowed to name their son thinking it might bring them closer. It hadn't. John had been tempted to replace Arthur's birth certificate with a doctored copy, and would have, had they been able to agree on a replacement name. Still, Arthur clearly wasn't the worst option Jen could have chosen.

When Vicky and John finally left to find the gold and save their lives, it was to the sound of Schmidt and Arthur butchering a telling of “King Arthur and King Cornwall.” It felt strangely appropriate. 

When they returned, blonder and more bruised two months later, Vicky refused to go into any details, save through her writing about Rosanna. And Schmidt, for once, was content to wait. He had heard enough from his contacts about what had happened without needing to hear it from Vicky or John right away. 

Once Vicky and John had had a chance to rest and recover (John wondered aloud whether all of their child-free vacations in the future would begin with threats and end with bullet wounds), Schmidt brought Arthur back, now well versed in both British folk songs (as well as British professional minstrel's songs) and American country, and fed them, tactfully not demanding information of them. He slightly ruined the effect of this tact, Vicky thought, by constantly reminding them how tactful he was being. 

Vicky took pity on him and handed him her manuscript, which she'd felt compelled to work on in the hospital while John healed. This time, working her feelings out through Rosanna's adventures worked--maybe because she had moved Rosanna back to the court of Louis XIV, where she had been before Vicky started using her to work through her feelings about her own adventures, and was thus able to distance herself at the same time as she unburdened herself through Rosanna.

Schmidt, unable to keep from reading the manuscript right at the table amongst the debris of dinner dishes, wept through the description of how Rosanna had been forced to abandon her injured love and pretend an amour for someone she called “Practical Joking Peter” in the book (though Schmidt obviously knew who she meant), only to be “reunited” with her love when both had been dumped and left for dead in a stolen sarcophagus in Carcassonne. 

Schmidt only wiped his tears and broke into a smile when he heard Arthur successfully playing scales in the next room. 

He’d used the two months to teach Arthur piano.


End file.
